You know we’re big fans of The Office here.
That’s because there’s so much overlap between running a paper company with a ragtag team of peculiar workers and a classroom of 30+ unique students.
Something that comes to mind is how Jim Halpert spent nine seasons of The Office staring straight into a camera every time Dwight did something unhinged. Every teacher knows that look. The only problem is that classrooms don’t come with a mockumentary crew, so the look usually lands on the clock, counting down the minutes til the bell rings.
When we asked Jenna Falconer which TV show gets teaching right, she skipped Jim entirely and picked the person behind the lens.
“I would say just the cameraman from The Office that’s trying to take it all in,” she says.
Jenna is the English Language Arts Teacher of Record Lead at Subject. She taught for over a decade in Illinois, Texas and Minnesota before going virtual, and some of her teachers now carry 500-plus students each. Below, she shares how a teacher can keep every kid in the shot, even the ones who never ask for screen time.
(By the way, you can book a free demo here to see how Jenna and her team can support your own classroom.)
Here’s what’s on the dashboard this week:
Today’s Deep Dive: Meet the outie sitting in third period
Reading Rainbow: Google plays hardball + the SAT plays tag
From Our Desk: Our dream celeb spokesperson…
Watch of the Week: Wildwood brings the crows to class
Meet the outie sitting in third period
For this week’s deep dive, we’re upgrading from The Office to another cult classic on Apple TV+.
In Severance, Lumon only ever meets the innie, the work-only version of an employee who forgets everything after the elevator ride home. School runs a similar program. The bell schedule introduces you to the third-period version of a kid, and the rest clocks out at the door.
Jenna, our ELA Teacher of Record Lead, has spent 16 years getting to know the outie anyway. Some of her teachers carry 500-plus students and still notice when one goes silent.
Here’s a self-check built from our latest playbook you can use right now. It takes less than five minutes.
The Outie Check
Who finished last week’s work suspiciously fast?
(This tests whether you watch pace or only scores.)Who stopped speaking up?
(This tests whether silence registers as a signal.)What phrase can’t your students stop saying, and where’s it from?
(This tests how current your read on their world is.)What did this group already cover last year?
(This tests whether you’re planning for this cast or last year’s.)What are they hearing in every other room?
(This tests whether your class adds to the pile or gives them a break)If a kid told you something heavy, who would you call first?
(This tests whether you have a plan before you need one.)
If any answer started with “the class,” that’s your homework this week. (Sorry. We know teachers hate homework even more than students do.)
Google makes schools an offer they can’t refuse: Google says K-12 student accounts will lose Google Search and its Gemini tools unless school admins turn the whole bundle on. Critics call it an ultimatum, and we call it the tech version of “you can keep the fries, but only with the combo.” Cool cool cool.
A lawsuit puts school Chromebooks under the microscope: A North Carolina family is suing Google, saying months of chats with Google’s AI on their teen daughter’s school Chromebook led to a mental health crisis. Google says it’s reviewing the claims, and the case is a sobering reminder to know what runs on the devices we hand kids.
Phone bans can’t fix scroll brain on their own: A Michigan English teacher saw his students stay fidgety even after the state’s phone ban, so he built a short routine to settle their brains before reading. Over three-quarters said their focus drifted less, and nobody opted out, even the boys who flashed a sarcastic “om” sign across the room.
Students grade their own quizzes and nobody riots: A world language teacher has students check their own quizzes with a different-colored pen, then asks each kid a quick “how did it go?” on the way out. Grading time drops along with test anxiety, and teenagers finally get to hold the pen of power.
The SAT is playing cat-and-mouse, and the mouse has a chatbot: The College Board is chasing AI cheating on the digital SAT, including a $499 tool that snuck past the test’s lockdown screen and fed students answers from a chatbot. That’s a lot of money and engineering to avoid learning what a semicolon does.
Teens weigh in on how much freedom kids get: The New York Times Learning Network rounded up what teenagers think about how much independence they had growing up. Consider it a free focus group, minus the pizza budget.
“Genius hour” gives kids the mic (and the moral high ground): An elementary school in Loudoun County, Virginia, lets kids research anything from black holes to glitter during “genius hour,” then they present every six weeks. One student even scolded the principal for wasting water at field day, which is project-based learning working a little too well.
Pass the cookies, we’re doing percentages: Pilot Light, a Chicago chef’s nonprofit, brings food into regular classes, so kids learn percentages by scaling cookie recipes. The founder says attendance goes up on those days, which tracks, since no kid in history has skipped school on cookie day.
Hey hockey fans… We’re redefining the Fall Classic.
Read a note from our CEO in celebration of our anniversary 🎉
Important: The celeb we’d work with if money was no object.
And as always, we’re hitting the road 🚙 If you’ll be at any of these upcoming conferences, email [email protected] to connect IRL:
November 15 – 17: OSBA Capital Conference in Ohio
November 16 – 18: CSDC 2026 (Charter) in California
November 20 – 22: IASB/IASA/IASBO Joint Annual Conference in Illinois
Watch of the Week: Wildwood
Why we’re obsessed: Laika’s crew spent years hand-posing tiny puppets one frame at a time. That makes this the only production in America that pays as much attention to every single character as a teacher does. The story follows a Portland kid who marches into a forbidden forest to rescue her baby brother from a flock of crows. The director calls the whole thing a celebration of “artistry over algorithms,” which honestly works as a faculty lounge motto.
Recommended lesson integrations:
First, next, then, last: Kids storyboard the crow kidnapping in four panels to practice putting events in order. It’s the only time “the crows took the baby” counts as a correct answer.
Bird brain lab: Teach how crows can recognize human faces and remember the people who bothered them. Crows hold a grudge longer than your class holds a grudge about losing indoor recess.
Map the Impassable Wilderness: Students draw a map of a made-up forest with a legend and a compass rose. Bonus points for marking the exact spot where the class hamster escaped in 2019.
The book vs. the movie: Read a few chapters of Colin Meloy’s novel, then compare what the film kept and what it cut. Every adaptation has an edit, and somebody’s favorite side character always ends up on the cutting-room floor.
Frame-rate math: At 24 frames per second, students figure out how many frames a two-hour movie needs (172,800). Then they calculate how many minutes they’d last before asking for a bathroom pass.
Shoot a 10-second stop-motion: Students use a phone and a lump of clay to make a short film. Ten seconds takes about 240 photos, so expect a new respect for animators and a new hatred of clay.
Artistry vs. algorithms debate: Students argue whether handmade art matters more now that AI can generate a movie poster in four seconds. The loudest defense of human creativity will come from the kid with 400 AI memes in their camera roll.
Would you rather?
That’s it from Subject this week! Go try something new this week and let it get a little messy. If it flops, congratulations, you’ve got a blooper reel and a great story for lunch duty.
The Subject Team
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